“How are Australian identity and culture represented in the texts you have studied?" While some texts choose to represent the Australian landscape as being harsh and untamed, others appear to present them in a more positive fashion. However, when we get to the heart of each text, it's context and purpose we find a common theme of connection with the land within them. In this analysis I will be using Wild Cat Falling by Mudrooroo, My Country by Dorothea Mackellar and The Drovers Wife by Henry Lawson. Wild Cat falling represents the main character as having a disconnection with the Australian landscape, which leads to him having an identity crisis, not knowing where he belongs. My Country represents the authors connection with the bush landscape, …show more content…
In this text the main character feels detached form the bush landscape and drawn to the city landscape, particularly the university, but even there he struggles to belong. On page 92 the main charter quotes "I believe in nothing it nobody, there is no refuge or comfort for me anywhere". This sentance uses emotive language of hopelessness and disconnection to get the reader to respond on an emotional level and the readers emotional response from that positions them to share the writers viewpoint. This technique is used in this text to convey the sense of rejection of his traditional connection to the landscape that he refuses to believe that he has. The effect on the audience is that we feel a strange disconnection with the Australian landscape and a feeling that we don't belong. On page 30 the main character quotes "on clear nights I could see the water alight under the space travelling moon and I would feel detached from life". This statement is used to show that the main character has this feeling of detachment with his traditional homeland. The effect of this is that we feel an atmosphere of regret and sadness, that something that sounds so great he feels rejected by and detached from. The rejection and detachment of the landscape the main character feels in wild cat falling show an Identity of disconnection with the land some Australians
In this society, literature plays a major part in schools around the country and for many generations. Literature has helped create a social norm in today’s society, such as marginalisation of the indigenous Australians. Marginalisation is the treatment of a person group or concept that is seen as insignificant, and this is shown throughout different types of literature that schools provide. Among some of the literature includes the novel of wild cat falling which presents marginalisation as the novels main theme. Wild cat falling was written by Mudrooroo, also known as Colin Thomas Johnson, an Aboriginal novelist who is best known for his work on the novel Wild cat falling. The novel was published in 1965 and tells the story
It is crucial that we study Australian Narratives as it creates insights into events we may have not explored. This is evident in the novel "Crow Country" written by Kate Constable. It teaches us about Aboriginal beliefs and spirituality, Australia's History and respect, as we experience what it feels like to live in rural Australia, creating an understanding about Aboriginal people. Therefore, through a close read and study of "Crow Country", readers are able to learn new and important things about our past and present, showing that it is crucial to study Australian Narratives.
Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.
Through the use of poetic devices, the author has successfully encouraged the audience to explore their thoughts on Australian identity and to reflect on our nation’s history.
The notion of the contemporary indigenous identity and the impact of these notions are both explored in texts that have been studied. Ivan Sen’s 2002 film ‘Beneath Clouds’ focuses on the stereotypical behaviours of Indigenous Australians highlighting Lina and Vaughn’s journey. This also signifies the status and place of the Australian identity today. Through the use of visual techniques and stereotypes the ideas that the Indigenous are uneducated, involved in crime and the stereotypical portrayal of white people are all explored. Similarly the notion of urban and rural life is represented in Kennith Slessor’s ‘William Street’ and ‘Country Towns’.
Similarly the idea of Australian life and isolation is depicted in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ where poet is eager to reach home. Perhaps the poet desires to visualise beautiful Australian landscapes as to allow the readers to view the magnificence of flora and fauna in contrast to the man-made destructions. It appears that the poet has been isolated for ‘twelve months’, and Sydney in this case acts as a barrier of poet’s desire towards nature. The title itself symbolises poet’s home and the destination which contradicts to the urban
Both speakers ply nature as setting to express their emotion.the speaker in the poem “The Lonely Land”apply “cedar and jagged fir’s action” as setting to express the lonely environment of the poem and the negative attitude.
“Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free” I lulled the words over in my mind as I stared out at the bulga (mountains) from inside my car. The view of the mountain range was captivating beyond expression- the mellow, yellow rays of the setting guwing (sun) shed a soft light over the beautiful landscape. Clear grassy plains contrasted with the dense green shrubbery of the bush, this was my nura (country)- I loved it. Into the opening stumbled a young gubba (white man). He carried a rifle and prowled the area waiting for a dingu (dingo) to hop past.
This essay will critically explore Barbara Baynton’s bush stories Squeaker’s Mate and The Chosen Vessel and it’s representations of the implications life had on women in the bush during the 1800’s and the 1900’s and examine the notion the bush is no place for a woman. According to Wells, the Australian bush is defined as having “an iconic status in Australian life and features strongly in any debate about national identity, especially as expressed in Australian literature”. Most Australian bush poems and short stories portrayed women as stay at home housewives. Women who went to live in the remoteness of the outback with their husbands were responsible for doing household chores, cooking, having children and looking after their child,
All that exists in this world, as the Aboriginal Australians believe, originates from “The Dreaming”, a cosmology of existence which serves as the larger context or background against which Aboriginal people orient their lives. In a mystical time long ago, anthropomorphic and theriomorphic beings who emerged from the land, traveled across Australia manifesting permanent geographic features and all there is into being. The essence of these powerful beings remains within the subterranean realm and evidence of their existence, vestiges, are embedded in the Australian landscape. Vast regions of western and central parts of the Australian continent are covered by harsh, arid terrain. Geographically, this region includes grassy plains, sand hills,
Robert Drewe’s short story The Bodysurfers (1983) is set in a beach house located in Pearl Beach. The main character David has taken his lover, Lydia, and his three children to the beach for the weekend where they swim and watch the possums run around. Les Murray’s poem Feb (1990) from Dog fox field is about the month of February in Australia and the harsh Australian bush. His other poem, The cows on killing day (1990) from Dog fox field is from the perspective of a herd of cattle on a day that they are being slaughtered. These three texts offer the ideas of nostalgia of childhood, and the contrast of the landscape of Australia; the beach versus the bush.
In a dry season complements what Lawson sees as the unforgiving Australian environment. His idea of a train travelling through this landscape gives him the opportunity to also highlight the personalities of the individuals who live in the bush, with each one being a different facet of the stereotypical bushman character. Lawson creates a distinctively visual image through the use of descriptive language which shapes the negative images of the bush, as the titles implies it is set during the ‘dry’ season when the environment is at its harshest. Lawson engages the reader immediately through the use of second person in “you’ll” and the imperatives in “draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep away from the train”. This allows the readers to distinctively visual the bush setting. The narrator’s negative impressions of the outback is evident in the stoic tone “the least horrible spot in the bush, in a dry season” being where is has been cleared away and the understatement “narrow muddy gutter” to describe the Macquarie river during a dry season. The distinctively visual sketch offers to the reader an imaginary insight of the difficult experiences present in Australia’s
Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s wife’ is a personal story depicting an archetypal portrait of all drovers wives of the 1900’s. Lawson represents the wives through a woman characterised as a strong, protective mother who has the ability to fight against the disasters of the Australian bush. Lawson’s use of alliteration, “The bush with no horizon.. no undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye” emphasises the isolation of the drover’s wife from the rest of the world. The unequivocal tone and hyperbolic image of ‘no horizon’, portrays the harsh landscape allowing the responders to empathise with the loneliness. The provocative image of the Drover’s wife and its environment enhances her development of resilience, tenacity and fortitude which is vital
The idea of Australian Gothic is about the land itself and how people managed to live in a malevolent landscape. the Australian hardships of bush life while presenting a grim and alienated, while the women live in the land independently. The bush women are juxtaposition in the land between fair and strength, and isolation of living alone without a husband or a man to protect them ( Turcotte, 2). This essay will explore the idea of women in the landscape and represent an idea of the women in the forest “emphasises the horror, uncertainty and desperation of the human experience” ( Turcotte, 2) which demonstrate the Australian identity of the woman in the bush. This idea will be presented in the novels of females protagonist “ A Dreamer” by Barbara Baynton and “The
Wright further conveys the poignancy of the Aborigines’ disappearance in the third stanza. Structurally, the third and first stanzas parallel each other; both list aspects of indigenous Australian culture that no longer exist. In the first stanza, Wright highlights the loss of the “song” and the “dance”. Similarly, in the third stanza, she notes the absence of the “hunter” and the “spear”. Wright describes the “spear” as “splintered underground”, giving the reader an image of a weapon broken, smothered in the dirt, lying unseen. Thus, the poet stresses the extinction of the Aboriginal tribal traditions. Wright also notes, through her metaphor of the “painted bodies/a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot” that rituals such as corroboree are no longer practiced. Her use of the words “dream”, “sleeping”, and “forgot” emphasizes that these ancient rituals, so much a part of Aboriginal culture, have ceased to live on today. Wright then states that “the nomad feet are still”. Here, the word “nomad” refers to the itinerant lifestyle of the Aborigines, “still” now, since the Aboriginal way of life no longer has any value in Australian society.